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General Defends Army Chief Who Spoke Out

WASHINGTON, April 16 Â Gen. Richard B. Myers, who retired six months ago as the nation's top military officer, said today that senior administration officials had been wrong to publicly criticize the former Army chief just before the invasion of Iraq for saying the mission could require a much larger force than was ultimately committed.

"He was inappropriately criticized, I believe, for speaking out," General Myers said during an interview on the ABC News program "This Week With George Stephanopoulos."

The comment came as General Myers made otherwise supportive comments about Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who is facing calls to resign from several retired generals, some of whom were involved in the invasion and occupation of Iraq. In televised interviews today, several Republican lawmakers defended Mr. Rumsfeld to varying degrees, while some Democrats renewed their calls for his ouster.

General Myers, who has emerged as one of Mr. Rumsfeld's chief defenders, repeated his comments from late last week that generals speaking out against the defense secretary are inappropriately breaching military etiquette that dictates officers only air complaints with the civilian leadership privately.

But his comments also marked the first time since his retirement that General Myers, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has weighed in on the administration's handling of the 2003 troop estimate by Gen. Eric K. Shinseki, who was then the Army chief of staff. General Myers's remarks today were focused on the criticism of General Shinseki, and not on the substance of his comments about troop levels in Iraq.

The clash three years ago between General Shinseki and the civilian Pentagon leadership still rankles some of his former military colleagues and goes to the heart of the complaints that Mr. Rumsfeld and his top aides Â who are philosophically in favor of a smaller, faster military disregarded calls for more troops to secure Iraq that came even before the invasion began.

In February 2003 General Shinseki, who had commanded the NATO peacekeeping force in Iraq, testified in Congress that peacekeeping operations in Iraq could require several hundred thousand troops, in part because it was a country with "the kinds of ethnic tensions that could lead to other problems."

Days later, Paul D. Wolfowitz, then the second-ranking official at the Pentagon, called the estimate "wildly off the mark," a sentiment that Mr. Rumsfeld repeated in unusual public comments that were widely interpreted in Washington as a rebuke to General Shinseki.

Mr. Wolfowitz told Congress then that the American force could be sufficiently smaller than Mr. Shinseki had estimated because the Iraqis would welcome the Americans and because the country had no history of ethnic strife and was unlike Bosnia. Just this week, commanders on the ground in Iraq have said the current sectarian strife there reminded them of the situation in the former Yugoslavia.

General Myers said today that he believed the news media had overblown coverage of the confrontation, failing to take note that Mr. Shinseki had been "put in a corner" by United States senators during testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee.

"General Shinseki was forced to make that comment under pressure, pulled a number out, wasn't wedded to it," General Myers said today.

But, he added, "Now, there were some mistakes made by, I think, some of the senior civilian leadership in taking General Shinseki on about that comment. I think that was wrong, and I've expressed those views, as a matter of fact."

General Myers also rebutted criticism from some retired generals last week that he and other ranking generals had failed to stand up to Mr. Rumsfeld, saying, "We gave him our best military advice and I think Â and that's what we're obligated to do. If we don't do that, we should be shot."

In all, the Sunday morning news programs Â which usually have lower viewership on big holidays like Easter Â were dominated by discussion of Mr. Rumsfeld's fate, continuing prolonged coverage of an issue the White House and the Pentagon have been trying to put to rest. On Friday, President Bush interrupted his Easter vacation at Camp David to issue a strongly worded endorsement of his defense secretary.

Mr. Rumsfeld's most ardent defender of the morning today was Representative Duncan Hunter, Republican of California and chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, who said Mr. Rumsfeld had done a good job under tough circumstances.

Senator Richard G. Lugar of Indiana and Senator George Allen of Indiana each voiced support for the president's decision to stand by Mr. Rumsfeld in separate interviews, but each man fell short of any sort of ringing endorsement of his leadership and argued that his forced resignation would provide too great a distraction at a crucial time for the nation.